The invention relates to change management. The invention also relates to methods of and apparatus for requesting and communicating requests for computer system maintenance or change.
Maintenance of computer systems is known as change management. With current change management, requests for changes and other communications can be quite cumbersome and different from one division of an organization to another. In many large organizations, communications of requests and communications of the status of those requests typically take place by e-mail.
Some organizations may have a web page for request submittals, but after the request is submitted, subsequent communications typically take place by e-mail. Such subsequent communications may involve, for example, approvals, denials, cancellations, status requests, scheduling, and re-scheduling.
Because of this lack of structure, requested maintenance is sometimes performed even though appropriate approvals have not been granted. Alternatively, the maintenance may not occur because the appropriate approvals have not been received by the requester. Proper communication is important, but difficult in a large organization.
Using calendars to organize information in a computer network environment is known in the art. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,898,431 to Webster et al. (incorporated by reference).
The invention provides a method of communicating and scheduling maintenance requests and an apparatus defined by the method. A maintenance requester is provided a maintenance request form having various fields. The maintenance requester can provide information about a maintenance request with the fields which include, for example, a field with which the maintenance requester can provide identifying information, and a field with which the maintenance requester can provide a proposed date when maintenance will take place. Maintenance request information that the maintenance requester provided using the maintenance request form is received and stored in a database. A user is provided a calendar having boxes corresponding to days of a month, showing the maintenance request in a box corresponding to the maintenance requester""s proposed date when the maintenance will take place, and showing status information associated with the maintenance request indicating whether the maintenance request has been approved, denied, or is pending an approval decision.
In one aspect of the invention, an administrator interface is provided to the maintenance administrator with which the administrator can make changes to the status information associated with the maintenance request. In another aspect of the invention, changed status information is indicated with a change of color.
In one aspect of the invention, a schedule number is assigned to the maintenance requester information and the maintenance requester information is associated with the schedule number.
In another aspect of the invention, the fields include a field with which the maintenance request can indicate who will be impacted by the computer system maintenance, and the change request information is transmitted to whoever was indicated as being impacted by the maintenance.